Fired For Word ‘Negro’: Spanish Teacher Petrona Smith Fired From Bronx School After Slur, Claims Misunderstanding

What a surprise it was for Petrona Smith, a 65-year-old Bronx teacher who was fired from PS 211 in March, 2012.

The reason behind her dismissal was even more shocking for her: students had complained of being called "negro" and a "failure" by the teacher. Now Petrona Smith is suing the school for wrongful termination.

Smith, who is black and a native of the West Indies, said the students misunderstood her meaning; the Spanish teacher was teaching a lesson about how to say different colors in Spanish and said the word "negro," which is Spanish for the color black. She told her students that it was not a derogatory term because people whose native language is Spanish, often use the word "moreno" when referring to a black person.

"They haven't even accounted for how absurd it is for someone who's black to be using a racial slur to a student," said Shaun Reid, Smith's attorney. "Talk about context! There's a lot of things wrong here."

In court papers, Smith addresses another incident involving allegation that she called some students "failures." She states that some of her students had failed a test and she asked them to sit in the back of the classroom.

Petrona Smith insists she was the one who suffered abuse, as she claims her students often called her by derogatory terms such as "f***ing monkey," "cockroach" and "n****r," but she always rose above their insults.

The investigation that finally culminated with her termination relied mostly on the word of four 7^th graders, although the parents of one of the students admitted he had lied.

After the incident, Smith hasn't been able to find a job, and although the city Law Department received the papers of her lawsuit, they haven't reviewed them.